Lionel Buys MTH Tooling

[gregj410]

Hopefully Lionel will equip the MTH engines with Legacy or minimum TMCC and send the left over DCS remotes to the fan boys on OGR requesting a remote before DCS drifts off to never land.

C-Liners are Legacy equipped.

I only run big steam, mainly articulated. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the steam Premier line.

[Neil]

I think the future is, as always, uncertain, but there are some "most likely" type outcomes. MTH keeps doing special runs at low volume, mainly special orders from dealers as custom runs. No new tooling from MTH. No real substance to DCS development, just keeping the ICU patient breathing for a few years until MTH finally sinks beneath the waves. Most of the 80% of tooling said to still be with MTH will never see the light of day under the MTH label. MTH closes when the current small number of employees decide to retire or Mike Wolf has had enough, or both.

Parts will depend on whether the Atlas and Lionel acquisitions turn out well or not.

Be interesting to see whether we can figure out whether the new MTH becomes Lionel tooling is transferred to another factory (i.e., one that is experienced in TMCC/Legacy) used by Lionel or the old MTH factory starts installing TMCC/Legacy in the former MTH tooling. I'm sure this information will eventually leak out. Interesting times.

[G3750]

It will save us the expense and trouble of having to gut PS-3 electronics for TMCC.

Couldn’t agree more! I just spent more than I care to admit on a Ps2 to ERR conversion with super chuffer and LED’s. My ace in the hole is to convert the fleet over to ERR however there are quirky things with ERR I’m not completely satisfied with.

Hopefully Lionel will equip the MTH engines with Legacy or minimum TMCC and send the left over DCS remotes to the fan boys on OGR requesting a remote before DCS drifts off to never land.

I don't see any way in Hell that Lionel equips MTH engines with DCS. Not only would it be a technologically stupid decision (replacing something that works with a dodgy product), but it would severely undermine Lionel's credibility as well as the TMCC and Legacy user bases. Ain't happening.

George

[G3750]

From the "Truth is Stranger Than Fiction" Department:

Yesterday some 350 lbs. slob walked in the door at the hobby shop in search of a TIU. I choked back the impulse to ask if he were stoned or just stupid and instead asked if he currently used DCS (figuring he might have a dead TIU that needed replaced). He said no. He runs Legacy but he wanted try DCS. My boss was there or I would have asked him if he wanted the last seat on the Titanic.

I don’t get it. I just don’t. And over on an OGR thread about the July 15 announcement, some other knucklehead is gloating about what a hero Mike Wolf is and all the good he's done.

Goes to show you that selective amnesia really is a thing. The guy conveniently forgets that MTH was sued over its "borrowing" of buildings from Woodland Scenics, City Classics, and others. That lawsuit was settled and swept under the rug, but there was a fair amount of collateral damage to small companies. And I know of widespread unhappiness in the HO community with MTH's litigation tactics in that scale - to the point of burning DCS HO decoders. Of course there's MTH's track record of entering a market with fanfare and then quietly moving on - Railking Gauge 1, "S", European trains, HO. And where are those hobby shops that were mostly dependent on MTH?

I'm not sure how much MTH will be missed, except perhaps by the uninformed or the terminally gullible.

Like Roger, I find the losses of Weaver and K-Line much more lamentable.

George

[MartyE]

I have DCS and use the WiFi app more as a learning tool than operating engines. My plan for future, possible TIU failures is to sell my DCS equipped engines. Personally I have only about 7 so when the TIU dies I'll be selling them.

[healey36]

Goes to show you that selective amnesia really is a thing.

Nothing new. The 3-rail toy train racket has a history of disreputable "magnates". I would suggest a bit of reading. Take a look at the 10-year campaign of lies and misinformation promulgated by Josh Cowan and Lionel following WWI which destroyed the premier toy and toy train manufacturer in the U. S., that being Ives Manufacturing Company. Some would argue it was done for tech, as Cowan had a hard-on for Ives' 4-position reverse unit. Maybe, but I would think it was done for straight up greed. Some things never change, mate.

[jlong]

I think the future is, as always, uncertain, but there are some "most likely" type outcomes. MTH keeps doing special runs at low volume, mainly special orders from dealers as custom runs. No new tooling from MTH.

Seeing the way battery, motor, and LED technology has gone over the past decade. I forsee Lionchief Dead Rail on the horizon. The locomotives would be perfectly compatible with a pre-existing 3 rail environments as well the ability to run on 2 rail track such as a loop in the garden or just starting out with 2 rail track altogether. This includes running a transformer controlled train and dead rail train on the same track. How locomotives of such could be outfitted with TMCC on a single ground plane, I don't know. The way I understand it is TMCC locomotive processors require AC current. Of course the locomotives would work perfectly well with Lionchief processors. Naysayers pose a week argument. Cordless electric power tools along with cordless electric lawn and garden tools have replaced corded, pneumatic and gas by a landslide in recent years. The nitwits on OGR would flame me to death for making such a prediction but they are the same nitwits who try to make the 3rd rail disappear with paint.

[G3750]

Goes to show you that selective amnesia really is a thing.

Nothing new. The 3-rail toy train racket has a history of disreputable "magnates". I would suggest a bit of reading. Take a look at the 10-year campaign of lies and misinformation promulgated by Josh Cowan and Lionel following WWI which destroyed the premier toy and toy train manufacturer in the U. S., that being Ives Manufacturing Company. Some would argue it was done for tech, as Cowan had a hard-on for Ives' 4-position reverse unit. Maybe, but I would think it was done for straight up greed. Some things never change, mate.

Oh, I know. Very few saints in the 3-rail train world (or anywhere else for that matter). Which is why I find the current movement to canonize Mike Wolf so amusing.

George

[jlong]

Oh, I know. Very few saints in the 3-rail train world (or anywhere else for that matter). Which is why I find the current movement to canonize Mike Wolf so amusing.

George

I just find it hilarious how their so called savior promised to own Lionel then suddenly one day ditches them for Florida.

[chuck]

The way I understand it is TMCC locomotive processors require AC current.

They need it for the "heartbeat", aka the base frequency that everything runs off of. You could supply that with a piezo oscillator. The really big thing is you are using the house wiring as an integral part of the design. The ground wires in the house provide a faraday gage that keeps the signal "inside" with the vertical runs being one side of the transmitter and the horizontal tracks (90 degrees apart) the other. The receiver (aka the trains and accessories) are all "inside" the cage.

I just find it hilarious how their so called savior promised to own Lionel then suddenly one day ditches them for Florida.

Dude didn't have much of an exit plan. Cest le Vie.

[G3750]

The way I understand it is TMCC locomotive processors require AC current.

They need it for the "heartbeat", aka the base frequency that everything runs off of. You could supply that with a piezo oscillator. The really big thing is you are using the house wiring as an integral part of the design. The ground wires in the house provide a faraday gage that keeps the signal "inside" with the vertical runs being one side of the transmitter and the horizontal tracks (90 degrees apart) the other. The receiver (aka the trains and accessories) are all "inside" the cage.

Yes, back in the day computers used that frequency for time-slicing, i.e. timesharing. Every process got a 1/60th of a second crack at the CPU, thus giving the illusion of each user having exclusive use of the computer.

I just find it hilarious how their so called savior promised to own Lionel then suddenly one day ditches them for Florida.

Dude didn't have much of an exit plan. Cest le Vie.

No, but for all their ineptitude and internal "sturm und drang", Lionel retains a certain inertia. Their brand is very strong and somewhat impervious to their day to day issues. That's something that MTH (and others) never had. Owning Lionel or bringing them to heel would have required enormous perseverance and rigor. To my mind, MTH was capable of some brilliant conceptual product thinking but never got the execution quite right - too many short-cuts, too scatter-shot.

Take DCS for example. Incredibly innovative 2nd generation control system with a number of terrific features:

• Hand-held remote w/ LCD screen
• Cascading (hierarchical) menu system with soft-keys
• System upgrades via downloading
• Software adjustable parameters on use and behavior (kids)
• Scale MPH

These are killer features, all vastly superior to the TMCC system of the time (which to be fair, was a 1st generation system). Unfortunately, the signal transmission aspect of the system wasn't as well thought out. In fact it was marginal, rendering the superior and totally cool user interface irrelevant.

George

[v8vega]

I have a friend with a large G scale garden RR. He is all battery powered. can you imagine cleaning all that track?

[rogruth]

I have a friend with a large G scale garden RR. He is all battery powered. can you imagine cleaning all that track?

That is not usually a problem with battery powered locos since they don't get power from the rails.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I have a friend with a large G scale garden RR. He is all battery powered. can you imagine cleaning all that track?

That is not usually a problem with battery powered locos since they don't get power from the rails.

Exactly; battery powered pretty much eliminates track cleaning regarding any electrical conductivity. Still have to get flora & fauna off the track,

[chuck]

Take DCS for example. Incredibly innovative 2nd generation control system with a number of terrific features:
Hand-held remote w/ LCD screen
Cascading (hierarchical) menu system with soft-keys
System upgrades via downloading
Software adjustable parameters on use and behavior (kids)
Scale MPH

There was an add in Model Railroader for an enhanced version of DCC with a handheld remote with a small LCD screen, scale MPH, two way communication. Well before DCS was announced, possibly before MTH broke from Lionel. I don't what became of it, probably never released.

Re why Lionel didn't choose to use DCC. They did look at it, in fact they looked pretty hard at it. They also evaluated QSI's state machine system. They felt the latter was too cumbersome because of the arcane use of DC offset pulses and voltage swings (all true). The abandoned DCC because at the time they were using AC motors in their locomotives and it was a real PITA to adapt an AC loco to DCC and the conversion was permanent/pre-emptive. There was no way to get back to "conventional". The biggest drawback was command latency. DCC does not have the bandwidth to run large TOY trains on small layouts at the speed most of us are accustomed to. By the time the command was digested and acted on the loco would have de-railed, crashed, missed the station, .... This was long before DC can motors were used in higher end equipment and users actually wanted trains to run slowly, aka prototypically.

The biggest mistake Lionel made was not upgrading the CAB-1 to unlock features that were already in the system and the decoders inside every TMCC loco ever made. The limits on speed steps and address ranges are caused by limitations in the CAB-1 and the original PowerMasters which were released about a year before the original command base. You could access this material from a computer interface but not from within the system until the release of Legacy. I had purchased a Legacy command set about a year before I even picked up a Legacy locomotive just to get access to these features. My original S-2 Electric with Odyssey 1 was "temperamental" under TMCC control. When I ran it in TMCC mode under Legacy it became one of my best performers, 256 speed steps. I verified up to 150 steps with a strobe light before I had to shut down the experiment because she was rocking around on the bearing blocks. You can feel the "click" on the speed control wheel on the CAB-2. I counted up to 150 and observed the strobe illuminated marker (a dot of white out on the wheel rim) slowly moving around the wheel with each click.